Electronic research databases provider EBSCO publishing (EBSCO), a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., US, is introducing a series of new databases designed to provide researchers and students with a starting point for their research and assignments.
Research Starters are topic overviews, relevant to key areas of academic study, including links to key articles in EBSCOhost databases. The topics correlate directly to courses taught at colleges and universities and provide students with authoritative, discipline-specific articles offering comprehensive overviews of important academic subject areas and topics. The databases aim to provide a gateway to resources required for assignments, including quick access to key, related articles from EBSCOhost which have been hand-picked by subject-matter experts and scholars.
Research Starters follow an easy to use format. Each Research Starters database initially consists of 500 topics with about 25 to 50 new topics added each year. Each database includes a collection of summary articles written by subject-matter experts exclusively for EBSCOhost. Articles are also available in both HTML and PDF versions.
Summary articles include Abstracts, an Overview section, and charts graphs and tables for visual reference. In addition, articles contain Application of Concepts, Definitions of Terms and Concepts, Extensive Bibliographies, Links to Articles on EBSCOhost from the Bibliographies, a 'Suggested Reading' section and Author Biographies.
EBSCO will provide the first two Research Starters databases, Research Starters - Business and Research Starters - Education on an extended free trial basis through June 2009. The appropriate Research Starters collections are available on an "opt-in" basis to all EBSCOhost customers subscribing to applicable databases such as Business Source, Academic Search and Education Research Complete.
